Zombie Cliche Lookout: Pull Away
Zombies are scary, no doubt about it. They’re disgusting looking. They don’t get tired. They literally eat you. And, worst of all, whatever is left of you after the zombie is done eating turns into yet another zombie. They make great stand-ins for making all sorts of social and political commentary. But there’s a downside. It’s a pretty big one: zombies are stupid.
I mean, let’s not kid ourselves here. Of all the major monsters, zombies are without a doubt the dumbest. Vampires and werewolves? Both pretty smart. Golems? Not the brightest, perhaps, but fairly capable. Zombies, on the other hand, really struggle. They’re purely instinctual and single minded. They aren’t strategic. They don’t consider pros and cons. They just act based on their feeding drive, which gives the canny survivors some pretty distinct advantages.
About this Episode:
Today’s episode is the first one since I updated my lighting setup. I’ve been using a three point lighting setup for quite a while lately, and it’s done a pretty solid job of giving me nice, largely even lighting. Before today’s episode, I had one light on either side, plus one set back and to the left of the camera. It worked, but gave me some strange light and dark areas, and pretty inconsistent shadows.
Now I’ve taken the light that was behind the camera and moved it so that it is suspended above my shooting area instead. That way we get fill light from both sides, plus a large overhead that acts sort of like the sun. So far I like it. We’ll see how the photo quality looks in the coming weeks.
Discussion Question: Outsmarting Zeds
Building on the zombie cliche lookout above, I have a simple discussion question for you guys: what’s one cool way people can use their superior intellect to survive the zombie apocalypse?
i cant wait till the next one
Hah, good. Glad to hear it.
Well, if they hadn’t wanted the keys off of one of the zombies, I’d say a really easy way of getting rid of the zombies would be to simply lure them into a pit they can’t escape from. Now if you gotta kill zombies to loot things you need from them, then you need something better than a pit. I would personally go with something that swings around rapidly and hits at around head height for the zombies. Of course, that’s extremely easy for people in this comic to do, because the majority of LEGO figures are the same height. 😀 In real life, however, one would probably want something that can hit at common heights zombies would normally be at, or which hits with a rapidly oscillating up and down motion so more height variation could be taken into account. It’s very likely that a midget zombie could be serious trouble for people not normally used to looking at or below kneecap height! 😀
The uniformity of minifigures is an interesting topic. I think it’s pretty hilarious how every character (except the kids) is the same height and build.
Possibly two typo alerts, these are a bit iffy, flagging them anyway so Dave can decide what to do about them:
“whatever is left of you after the zombie is done eating turning into” turning–>Either replace with “turns” or “is turned”
“and it’s done a pretty solid job of giving my nice, largely even lighting. ” my–>me 😀
As I wrote above, two iffy typos. 😀
Fixed both; thanks!
If that mouseover text is supposed to represent translations of the three lines of zombie word balloons in the comic, either one of the balloons is in the wrong panel, or one of the sound effects is misplaced in the wrong panel! 😀
As is, I tend to think of the three zombie word balloons as follows:
“hey a noise”
“let’s investigate”
“duck for dinner, anyone?”
Hah, it wasn’t really meant as a literal translation, just a joke. The zombie dialog is there only as a reminder that this horde is constantly making loads of noise.
They must have some way of distinguishing when it’s another zombie making a noise, or this entire horde out front should have wandered off by now! 😀
Right you are. That’s something I’ve seen asked of zombie writers many times in the past.
How about tricking a zombie into running (assuming it’s the running king) headfirst into a mirror in an attempt to catch your reflection, and then finishing it off while it’s still dazed and confused?
You know, like that one Velociraptor from the first Jurassic Park film.
There was a character in World War Z (the actual book, not the movie with the same name but had nothing to do with the source material) , a Japanese WW2 vet who was blinded by the atomic bomb blasts, he would corner himself off in the forest, like on a narrow bridge that forced zombies to attack him one at a time. He would then hit them over the head with a shovel :p